Major Forces of Leadership - Assignment Example

? Leadership Table of Contents Table of Contents 2 Introduction 3 Creation of Environment 4 Leadership Style 9 Motivation 11 Reference 13 Introduction After many successful years of working for other companies, I have decided to open a graphic designing company. I have decided to recruit 10 design professionals with whom, I have worked for many years in my previous organizations and some support staff in order to run the business. I have named my graphic design company as Blue Angel Private Limited. My graphic design company will provide two types of services such as brand development and brand design solution to customers. Under the umbrella of brand development, my company will provide solutions like designing the brand portfolio, naming the brand, creating the package design of the product and reconfiguring existing brands. Blue Angel Pvt. will provide solutions like designing all the customer touch points such as creating corporate and customer identity of the brand under the name of brand designing solution (Blue Marlin, 2013). Five force analysis of the graphic designing industry can be explained in the following manner. Type of Force Intensity of the force Characteristics of the Force Buyer Power Moderate Although the switching cost for customers is low but buyer power in the industry has reduced due to involvement of value billing system. Supplier Power Low Graphic designing companies have the option to choose supplier from plenty of available suppliers such as freelancers, trained graduates and experienced professionals. Substitutes Moderate Collected design from Asian countries and eco-design or individual designs. New Entrant Low Graphic designing is not a resource hungry industry, hence talents move from one company and start a venture without investing huge amount of capital. Competition High The industry is hypercompetitive due to presence of many players; competitors compete with each other on the basis of price and process of service delivery. (Source: Cooper, Evans and Williams, 2009) It is evident from the industry analysis, that a leader must have expert knowledge and skill regarding graphic designing in order to help the organization innovate and attract talents from the industry. By lending the conceptual framework of “expert power” used in the research work of Yukl (2010), it can be said that leaders must have the creative knowledge to attract subordinates and coordination capability to infuse teamwork among subordinates in order to help the company to move ahead in the jungle of graphic designing industry. Creation of Environment According to Hannigan (2008) and Mullins (2007), it is important for any organization to develop a culture of reward, learning, knowledge sharing and creativity in order to address challenges created by macro environment. I believe that a leader of a graphic designing firm has to be a curious person; by stating the term “curious” I want to mean that the leader must have the willingness to gather information and knowledge from both internal and external sources and use the gathered ideas in order to bring innovation in the graphic designing process. In such context, I need to make sure that all of my team members in Blue Angel Private Limited have the same enthusiasm and culture value to gather and share knowledge. When I am talking about knowledge sharing culture in the organization, then it is evident that the readers of this report are expecting that I will take help of learning organization concepts in order to validate my points. The fact is that, research scholars such as Solesvik and Encheva (2010) have pointed out that innovation culture in the organizational can be created by integrating the concepts of organizational learning. Although organizations can use either formal or informal culture but I believe that, Blue Angel Private Limited should use organic organizational structure and informal culture in order to create room for successful and innovative environment. Krackhardt and Hanson (1993, p. 104) have defined informal organizational network as, “the networks of relationships that employees form across functions or divisions to accomplish tasks fasts.” According to Cross et al (2002), informal organizational structure tends to improve vertical integration in the process, team work, strategic alliances etc. Concept of learning organization can be integrated with informal organizational structure. Eminent management scholars such as Voronov (2008) and Kang et al (2007) have pointed out that, achieving innovation in the work place can be positively influenced by organizational learning. Theoretical arguments of various research scholars on benefits of informal organizational structure have influenced me to integrate informal organizational structure characterized with cultures, values and ethics with learning organization concepts in order to develop shared understanding about the purpose and direction of the organization among team members. I will use the concept of Social network analysis (SNA) in order to develop the informal organizational culture and organic structure for Blue Angel Private Limited. SNA is basically the central nervous system of the organic structure which will infuse culture of mutual respect and trust among my team members. SNA is basically a collective process of gathering knowledge from outside environment and then sharing the knowledge by all the team members in order to nurture the idea of developing a new product or process. In my graphic designing company, I will create two strategic groups with five members in group; these two groups will work as invisible informal structure in my organization. My organization does not have huge number of employees, to be honest, Blue Angel Private Limited is a very small organization hence it will be fatuous to adamantly follow theoretical models like mechanistic or bureaucratic organizational structure and open or organic organizational structure. There will be five networks such as communication network, information network, problem solving network, know network and access network. (Source: Toni and Nonino, 2010) Communication Network Two verticals of my organization will be strategic groups, these two groups will maintain communication link between me and other team members in my organization. These two groups will organize weekly meeting with team members and listen to problems and feedback of each team member and then communicate their problems to me. Both working and not-working information will be shared through the communication network. Information Network All of my team members will work together in order to collect information from external environment and then they will share information with other team members. It is expected that, employees in my organization will develop bond of mutual respect and trust while sharing knowledge with other team member in the group. Two-way knowledge sharing in my organization will remove the cultural barrier among employees and help them to work conjointly in order to develop new graphic designing concept and help my organization to offer innovative solution to customers. Know Network I will also be part of the know network organization. Size of my organization is small hence it will not be problem for me to meet each employee personally and communicate with them to know them beyond their work identity. Employees in my organization will be asset and they are the reason why my company is in business. Hence, I have to value my assets in order to create hospitable organizational culture. Problem solving network Two strategic groups will work together in order to handle projects with high degree of complexity. In such cases, 10 members in my team will create a knowledge circle with which they will try to address the complexities associated with the project. Each member will be free to give his/her opinions related to how the team can solve the complexity of the project. Access Network There will be state of art technologies and all types of relevant knowledge sources such as library which will contain various journals and books related to graphic design in my company. Employees will be free to access knowledge sources and a separate weekly knowledge session will be conducted where employees will test each other’s knowledge related to graphic designing. I believe that, developing five integrated networks within my organization will help me as a leader to synchronize core values like innovation and culture of knowledge sharing altogether which will create an environment of learning, trust and mutual respect in Blue Angel Private Limited. It has been already mentioned that, I have recruited graphic designing professionals and some other staff who will handle operational activities of my company. A team of six graphic designing professionals will handle brand designing responsibilities on the other hand, another team with four graphic designing professional and two marketing professional will work on projects related to brand development. However, members of both the team will be shifted interchangeably in accordance with the requirement of a project. Head of two strategic groups will be selected from existing ten graphic designing professionals in my organization. Experience, expertise, co-ordination capability and relationship with other colleagues will be the guiding criteria for selection of strategic head for a group. Two strategic heads will also work as point of contacts for the department wise teams and these two strategic heads will report me directly. I will create a separate marketing department with four marketing professionals who will negotiate with clients and bring projects for my organization. Sometimes, I will guide my marketing professionals for negotiating with vital clients for high value projects. A HR department with two human resource professionals will handle the recruitment & selection as well as training & development responsibilities. Overall there will be four departments in my organizations, financial department, HR department, marketing department and administration department. Leadership Style According to Yukl (2010), leaders can influence the achievement and performance of team members by motivating team members and aligning the interest of team members with value and purpose of the organization. It is evident from the research work of Yukl (2010), there are three types of power such as reward power, expert power and referent power, with which a leader can motivate team members to improve performance and achieve organizational objective. Under reward power, a leader can have a temporary power and influencing persona by providing financial reward to subordinates but such leadership power will not help me to drive innovation among my team members in Blue Angel Private Limited. On contrary, leaders can achieve referent power and expert power by showing interpersonal skill, knowledge and expertise to team members. It can be assumed from the proposed culture of my organization that I need to have referent and expert power in order to co-align interest of my team members with mission and purpose of my organization. According to Muller and Turner (2010), there is strong link between management concepts and leadership styles. Nature of overlapping and integration between management competence and leadership competence decides the success of any organization (Muller and Turner, 2010). Mintzberg (2004), separating leadership as social aspect of organization and management as technical aspect of organization makes each of them dysfunctional. Mintzberg (2004) has strongly argued that, without the guidance of leaders, management will work in dysfunctional manner but also there will not be any direction in the activities of the management. Hence, I will use my leader ship capabilities in an integrated manner in order to remove any kind of cog from the management wheel in my organizations. Although there are plenty leadership styles are proposed by research scholars but will I will discuss only discuss those five types of leadership which are pertinent to research problem in this paper. Situational Leadership According to Sims et al (2009), situational leadership is derived from contingency approach of management. According to the contingency model, there cannot be one standard management or leadership model which can help the organization to address all the complex macro-environmental challenges, hence organizations should develop leadership skill for each of its employees in order to empower them to act as leader in contingent situation. However, size of organization is small hence it will not be viable for me to using such broad management concept which is more applicable for larger organizations. Another thing is that, following transformational / distributive leadership model might create role ambiguity among my team members. Autocratic Leadership McGregor (1960) has conceptualized the Theory X and Theory Y in order to polarize behavioural aspects of leaders towards their employees. Managers with theory X orientation believe that employees do not respect their leader spontaneously and show negative attitude about the work. According to McGregor (1960, p. 34), autocratic leaders or leaders with theory X orientation believe that employees can be “controlled, directed, [or] threatened with punishment to get them to put forth the adequate effort toward the achievement of organizational objectives.” An autocratic leader show dogmatic attitude towards employee and do not accept their suggestion while making management decisions. I cannot allow myself to be an autocratic leader in order to ensure knowledge sharing, culture of mutual trust and respect in my organization. Democratic Leadership According to McGregor (1960), democratic leaders are those who have theory Y behavioural orientation. Leaders with theory Y orientation believe that, subordinates spontaneously show respect towards leaders and they have positive attitude towards work. A democratic leader prefers dialogic workplace communication among employees and also involves employees in important decision making. Although democratic leadership style helps me to communicate with my in effective manner but following the entire characteristics democratic leader will not help me to create culture of knowledge sharing in my organization. Action Centred Leadership According to me, this type of leadership style is most appropriate in accordance with organizational culture of my organization. The concept of action centred leadership was proposed by John Adair (1973). By taking the help of action centred leadership concept, I will develop three groups in my organization such as, 1- Group Function- I will establish measurable and transparent performance standard for both teams in my organization, 2- Task Achievement- I will ensure proper allocation of financial and non-financial resources such as knowledge, information, co-ordination etc among the team members and also check performances of team members in regular interval and 3- Personnel Development- I will listen to the problems of individual team members and try to provide support and solution to them which will develop them as better employee. Motivation One of the key figure of motivational research Vroom (1964), have proselytized the expectancy-value theory in order to find what factors can help a leader to motivate employees. According to Vroom (1964), motivation is a conjoint function of three variables such as expectancy, instrumentality, and valence. Motivation (M) = Expectancy (E) * Instrumentality (I) * Valence (V) I will use the expectancy value model of Vroom in order to motivate my team members to achieve their objectives and contribute to a shared vision of my organization. Expectancy According to Vroom (1964), expectancy is momentary belief among employees followed by a particular outcome. Expectancy value lies in the range 0 to 1, employee with 0 expectancy believes that there will be no outcome to his/her action whereas employee with 1 expectancy believe there will be definite outcome to his/her action. Instrumentality Instrumentality is defined as person’s belief that if he/she behaves in certain manner then there will be certain outcome. Valence Vroom (1964, p. 15) has defined valence as, “an outcome is positively valent when the person prefers attaining it to not attaining it.” I will try to motivate my employees by fulfilling the three verticals such as Expectancy Instrumentality, Valence of employee motivation. Knowledge sharing culture will not only drive innovation in my organization but also help employees to align their interest with shared purpose of my organization. Additionally, providing monetary and non-monetary benefits like, financial rewards, remuneration, promoting tem members to higher job responsibility instead of recruiting employees from outside sources, flexi work timings etc will also help me to motivate team members to improve performance and achieve organizational objectives. Reference Adair, J., 1973. Action-centered Leadership. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill. Blue Marlin., 2013. What We Do. [online] Available at: [Accessed 8 April 2013]. Cooper, R., Evans, M. and Williams, A., 2009. The Future of the UK Design Industry. [pdf] Available at: [Accessed 8 April 2013]. Cross, R., Borgatti, S. P. and Parker, A., 2002. Making invisible work visible: Using social network analysis to support strategic collaboration. California Management Review, 44(2), pp. 25-46. Hannigan, T., 2008. Management Concepts and Practices. 5th ed. Harlow: FT Prentice Hall. Kang, S., Morris, S. S. and Snell, S. A., 2007. Relational archetypes, organizational learning, and value creation: Extending the human resource architecture. Academy of Management Review, 32(1), pp. 236-56. Krackhardt, D. and Hanson, J. R., 1993. Informal networks: The company behind the chart. Harvard Business Review, 71(4), pp. 104-11. McGregor, D., 1960. The human side of enterprise. New York: McGraw-Hill. Mintzberg, H., 2004. Enough leadership. Harvard Business Review, November. Muller, R. and Turner, R., 2010. Leadership competency profiles of successful project Managers. International Journal of Project Management, 28, pp. 437-48. Mullins, L. J., 2007. Management and Organisational Behaviour. 8th Ed. Harlow: Pearson. Sims, H. P., Faraj, S. and Yun, S., 2009. When should a leader be directive or empowering: How to develop your own situational theory of leadership? Business Horizons, 52 (2), pp. 149-59. Solesvik, M. Z. and Encheva, S., 2010. Partner selection for interfirm collaboration in ship Design. Industrial Management & Data Systems, 110 (5), pp. 701-717. Toni, A. F. D. and Nonino, F., 2010. The key roles in the informal organization: A network analysis perspective. The Learning Organization, 17(1), pp. 86-103. Voronov, M., 2008. Toward a practice perspective on strategic organizational learning. The Learning Organization, 15(2), pp. 195-221. Vroom, V., 1964. Work and Motivation. New York NY: John Wiley. Yukl, G., 2010. Leadership in Organizations. 7th ed. London: Prentice Hall. Read More